David Fincher’s odd directorial choices

There are several major directors, who if you took a retrospective glance over their careers so far, you would notice make a conscious effort never to make the same kind of film twice; who aim to continually surprise by selecting projects that veer in a completely different direction to the films that have made before. Danny Boyle and Darren Aronofsky are good examples of this, and Black Swan and 127 Hours are great examples of how these directors continue to tread new ground with their latest efforts.

Since each new choice by these directors’ seems so fresh and so juxtaposed to their previous work, the films they do select can often be perceived as odd choices for them to opt for. Sometimes the choices seem strange for the simple fact that they differ so much to their previous project (e.g. Aronofsky’s jump from The Fountain to The Wrestler), and sometimes the selections are intrinsically odd (e.g. Punch Drunk Love).

David Fincher is another director who is known for this. With his latest outing, The Social Network (a film about Facebook of all things) seeming a particularly strange choice (both reflectively and intrinsically) and one set against type, we thought we’d take a look over Fincher’s past and future choices and just how odd each decision was.

Alien 3 (1992)



Fincher’s first film, Alien 3, was a critical and commercial failure. It is well known that Fincher despises this film and his involvement with it. In 2009, at the BFI Southbank, Fincher revealed:

“I had to work on it for two years, got fired off it three times and I had to fight for every single thing. No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me.”

Fincher’s decision to take on this project can hardly be deemed an odd one for a filmmaker trying to gain a foothold in the industry. The previous Alien films were huge successes, catapulting their directors into the blockbuster league, so what director in their right mind wouldn’t grab up the opportunity to direct the third installment in this excellent SF series and potentially become a part of that cohort?

Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien also had blown Fincher’s mind when he saw it at the age of 17 and he admits that it was one driving factor that sent him hurtling towards Hollywood. Regarding Alien 3, he commented:

“It would be stupid for me to say that I didn’t know what I was getting into… I always held out for something like this.”

One 1991 article (written a year before the film’s release) reveals: ‘The movie is certainly extraordinary for the choice of its director. David Fincher is probably the only 27-year-old first-time filmmaker ever hired to direct a $50 million movie (Fox’s official number, give or take a few million). Add to that the first director was let go while sets were being built, that the line producer was fired just before the start date, that the script wasn’t finished until two weeks into shooting, and you have a young man with his hands extremely full. As one of his friends puts it, “He was right out of Naval Academy School, and he got put at the helm of the Titanic”.’ It is easy to see why Fincher failed, then, with such a tortured project laid upon him.

On exactly how Fincher feels the film was a failure, he has stated:

“If we failed to do one thing in this film, and we failed to do many things, it was to take people out of their everyday lives. It’s not a scary scare movie but a queasy scare movie and I think people resent that.”

Se7en (1995)



Fincher then went on to direct Se7en. With regards to how he selected this particular project, Fincher has commented:

“I got a script by a guy who was kind of in my world, and thinking about films the same way I was, and revered the same kinds of movie that I revered – Andy Walker, who had written a script called Seven. He couldn’t get it made and had rewritten it 13 times in order to make it more “likeable”. So this script was floating around… So I read it, and got to the end, with the head in the box, and I called him and said, “This is fantastic, this is so great because I had thought it was a police procedural; now it’s this meditation on evil and how evil gets on you and you can’t get it off.” And he said, “What are you talking about?” And I talked about the whole head-in-the-box thing, she’s been dead for hours and there’s no bullshit chase across town and the guy driving on sidewalks to get to the woman, who’s drawing a bath while the serial killer sneaks in the back window. And he goes, “Oh, they sent you the wrong draft.””

Fincher took forward this older, much better draft, however, and created what is now often now hailed as a masterpiece. To produce a detective piece at this point in his career is not what is unusual about Fincher’s choice for a second film (many directors tackle the genre at some point); it is instead Fincher’s balls to craft something that is so against Hollywood and it’s typified happy-ending mode (and somehow managing to get away with it), which ultimately gave the audience a more truthful and deeper tale.

The Game (1997)



Producer Steve Golin bought the script for The Game from MGM (it originally being attached to Jonathan Mostow to direct, with Kyle McLachlan and Bridget Fonda in the lead roles) and gave it to Fincher in the hopes that he would direct. Like with Se7en, then, this is Fincher’s ‘choice’ only in the respect that he spotted a great project when it was dumped in front of him and had the sense to snap it up quickly.

This film explores deep seated psychological issues (within its protagonist), holds anarchistic tendencies as a positive trait, and has its protagonist’s entire world and outlook turned upside down and altered by the end of the film – all themes that we would see repeated in Fight Club.

Anarchic themes that are anti-establishment and anti-material possessions (Nicholas Van Outen – this film’s protagonist – is work and money obsessed at the start, and is turned around on this by the end; Fight Club’s Tyler Durden infamously holds the opinion of “The things you own end up owning you”) seem like they needed to be compulsory factors in scripts in order for Fincher to take them on. Se7en was anarchistic in its totality, due to its subversive and rebellious ending. It is fair to say, then, that these themes were a driving force in Fincher’s career at this point, regarding what he is trying to portray to audiences through the medium of film.

Dealing with such controversial themes in such an open manner is a dangerous thing for a director to do; if you continually go against the grain and try to make films that all the Hollywood big-wigs, with their condensed data on what the public likes, say “will not work”, you are risking your projects not being made at all, and we are lucky that Fincher made a big enough name for himself before he was snuffed out completely for his diversity and daring.

Fight Club (1999)



Next arrived Fincher’s true tour de force, Fight Club, adapted from popular cult novelist Chuck Palahniuk’s excellent book of the same name. Fincher has commented:

“The book [is] as good as it gets – I nearly pissed myself, I was laughing so hard when I read it. The guy who became my agent, Josh Donen, who was trying to buy the book with me, had told me to read it. I was like, “I don’t read books, and I’m in the middle of postproduction on The Game,” but he said, “You have to read it tonight.” So I did, and I called him back and said, “We gotta buy this.” And he said, “You waited too long. Fox bought it. But go in and meet with Laura Ziskin.” So I did and I told her, “I don’t want to make the $3m version of this; I want to crash planes, I want to blow up buildings and I want to do the thing that Hollywood really shouldn’t do, material like this.””

This final statement again reveals Fincher’s inherent anarchic desire to make films that work against Hollywood’s typical modes. And this is certainly Fincher’s most anarchistic piece to date; when it was released, concerns arose from government types that it might hold too much capacity to sway young minds in the audience towards this way of thinking; becoming anti-establishment and destructive based upon the newly realised discontent with their lives and disillusionment (and indeed, more Fight Club’s were started, to make people feel more alive, and who knows, perhaps a few Project Mayhem’s also).

With regards to his selection of this piece, this is another instance where a great script (or here, book) was dumped on Fincher’s desk and where he retained the sense to snatch the project up. Palahniuk’s book being a work that defines the angst and disillusionment of a generation, it was a project that any director simply shouldn’t ignore, and we should be thankful that Fincher got his grasp on it and portrayed it as it was meant to be, before another director took it and censored the life out of it, trying to conform to Hollywood’s rules.

Panic Room (2002)



After a considerable gap of time, Fincher made Panic Room. This was Fincher’s most conventional film up to this point and thus marks the biggest major step in another direction in Fincher’s career.

One online reviewer, after seeing the film, wrote ‘With the exception of how well the cast holds the film together, there’s nothing to it. There is no edge, no question, nothing left unsaid. Frankly, Panic Room has all of us Fincher fans a little concerned… But I shouldn’t speak too soon. Fincher is full of surprises.’ The film certainly lacks the controversial elements, anarchic outlook and exploration of deep themes that his previous efforts held, and it was not as well received by critics as his last three films. That is not to say that it is a disaster, however; in terms of suspense and the way in which it is shot, it is quite an accomplished feature.

Allegedly, Fincher chose to make Panic Room (a script by David Koepp) after Fight Club, because the latter was filmed across 150 different locations and the director sought a break (filming Panic Room in a self-contained location).

Zodiac (2007)



Next came Fincher’s return to the detective crime genre (explored previously with Se7en) and also a return to Fincher directing subject matter adapted from a book (or several books in this case). It was also the first of Fincher’s films to be shot digitally.

Being originally set to direct The Black Dahlia (a project later filmed by Brian De Palma), Fincher seemed already set to make a return to the crime genre before he agreed to take on Zodiac. He was given James Vanderbilt’s screenplay late in 2003, and Fincher was drawn to the story because he had spent much of his childhood in San Anselmo in Marin County during the initial Zodiac murders. Fincher has commented:

“I remember coming home and saying the highway patrol had been following our school buses for a couple weeks now. And my dad, who worked from home, and who was very dry, not one to soft-pedal things, turned slowly in his chair and said: ‘Oh yeah. There’s a serial killer who has killed four or five people, who calls himself Zodiac, who’s threatened to take a high-powered rifle and shoot out the tires of a school bus, and then shoot the children as they come off the bus.’”

Some speculate that for Fincher as a young boy, the killer “was the ultimate bogeyman.” The director was also drawn to the unresolved ending of Vanderbilt’s screenplay because it felt true to real life where cases are not always solved; the true portrayal of stories being something that we know Fincher always looks for.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)



Here, Fincher turned to a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. He commented:

“I read the first draft that was deemed unfilmable. And over the years, I heard about who had it and who was going to try next. I read Eric Roth’s draft in 2001/2002.” It was that particular draft that drew him in; as to why, he commented “I just thought the final image of a 74-year-old woman holding a seven-month-old baby and helping him through death, I just thought it was a beautiful way to end a love story.”

And:

“I think Terry Gilliam looked at it earlier. There are just so many layers of complexity in terms of the period, the evolution of the background, that once you give up the idea of five or six people playing this one person, and you can kind of focus on one actor – that’s what made it work for me. I know Brad will be able to describe this arc, he’ll be able to figure this guy out, and I just have to create a world for him to do that in. The first time I read it, when I read Robin [Swicord]‘s first draft of it in 1991-92, I think I was thinking of it then in terms of five or six actors, and it made my head hurt.”

In 2005 Fincher negotiated a deal with co-financers Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures to direct Zodiac and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button back to back.
This was Fincher’s first non-realism film since Alien 3 (that being SF and this piece being fantasy). With both Zodiac and this film, we witnessed him return to his routes in a way, through the return to crime and non-realism.

Both Zodiac and this film were highly lauded by critics and showed Panic Room to be only a temporary affliction in the quality of this director’s work.


The Social Network (2010)



And so we arrive at Fincher’s The Social Network, released this Friday 15th October in the UK. When many first heard the notion that a film about facebook was being made, they (especially those who didn’t know about the legal case) were rightly sceptical; what merit could come of a film about the social network made for superficial ‘status updates’ and pointless games? As soon as the news arrived that Fincher was attached to the project though, and the arriving trailers showed it was being handled in a mature manner, assumptions quickly fell away and opinions changed.

This is a very odd choice for Fincher to select. In one respect, it seems like yet another step in an entirely new direction for him, but there is also a similarity with Zodiac here with Fincher choosing to film a true story (and subsequently having to decide how much fact and how much fiction to use).


The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)



With his upcoming film after The Social Network, Fincher again surprises us with an unusual choice. He is doing what you generally find only small time directors do; he is directing the Hollywood remake of a successful, critically acclaimed foreign film: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Remakes of foreign successes are seen by most to be sacrilege, since they rarely work (or at least are almost always worse than the original) and they are a clear example of Hollywood’s resistance to back originality and its tendency to simply repackage successful ideas to make a profit.

Perhaps Fincher’s version is set to be more of a different interpretation of the book it was adapted from, though. Much like how Matt Reeves claims his Let Me In is less of a remake and more of an alternative interpretation of the novel. We’ll have to just wait and see what he does with it. No doubt it will be very different to Niels Arden Oplev’s version. One thing is for sure; this is yet another example of Fincher be risky with the projects he chooses to undertake, a quality, let us hope, that he always retains.

(This news feature was written by me for the site www.thefilmpilgrim.com, on which it can also be found)

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Review - 'The Night Watch' by Sergei Lukyanenko

I won’t be able to help but compare this work to the film at some point in this review, since I saw and enjoyed the films before reading this book, so I may as well start there.

Reading the book has made me respect the film more in some ways. Other than being superbly casted (though perhaps this is also due to me seeing it first), what they did do well with its adaptation was stripping out ‘story two’ and ‘story three’ completely (i.e. parts two and three) and just focusing on the story of Egor and which side he will choose, which is after all the real underlying (and only truly important) plot point of this book. The book also helped me to understand the film a lot more easily once I gave it another watch.

Perhaps the film goes too far by making Egor Anton's son, but it does serve to make the boy's choice to join the dark all the more believable, unlike in the book, where it is just an inherent given that lies within him.

What we lose almost completely with the film, due to its medium, is all of Anton’s ponderings on the morality of the Watches, who is currently playing him for a fool, the nature of light and dark, and his other musings, which is a sore loss indeed, as this novel's greatest strength lies in its characterisation of Anton. We truly end up rationalising every potential action he can take along with Anton himself.

The third part of the book, ‘story three’, I found far too slow moving and laborious, with all of the Night Watch except Gesar on holiday getting drunk and annoying or upsetting one another.

On a speculating on morality and the nature of good and evil, this is a great book. There is more smarts here than with your average urban fantasy novel, and for that it should be commended.

I'll be reading the entire series so check back for reviews on the subsequent books.

7/10

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The Mentalist - 'The Blood on His Hands' (Season 3, Episode 3): A fractured mind

“Sounds like he’s jealous Patrick. Sounds like he wants to take away everything and everyone that you care about. It’s a form of love you know... It seems that your friend John is planning a surprise party for you” - Bret Stiles

So arrived our first Red John focused episode of the season, and although it wasn’t up to the usual standard of a typical Red John episode, this was still a decent effort.

Affairs for the first three quarters of the episode are pretty mundane, back to basics stuff, with the CBI team investigating the murder of a girl who belonged to an organisation that we have come across before, Visualise, led by Bret Stiles (Malcolm McDowell) – who himself, it is revealed here, possesses information on Red John; and it is implied more than enough for Red John to be caught, but he withholds all but an address, at which Kristina is found, in a poor mental state.

The humour here was sparser than the last two weeks, but still great; highlights being Jane getting the Visualise staff member in the blue shirt to lead him to Stiles’ location and the fear of culpability causing that staff member to run away afterwards, and also Jane’s very clever use of a paper bag to disrupt a Visualise seminar and at the same time uncover who the FBI’s mole is inside the cult.

It was nice to see James Morrison, of 24 fame, here (Bill Buchanan was always great).

The slightly mundane murder investigation aside, the key focus here was simply getting Kristina back. And boy is she screwed up mentally (or playing a clever game; for those who believe she either is Red John or is an accomplice of his) – her believing that she dead and is currently residing in the afterlife; Patrick only being able to talk to her by ‘summoning her spirit’ in the manner that she used to for her work.



I was more impressed with the first two episodes of this season, but we’re still hitting highs continually so far, and The Mentalist is still currently showing the most potential for a great season out of all the shows I am currently watching.

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Fringe – 'The Plateau' (Season 3, Episode 3): Probability juggling

“You know why you didn’t die today, right? Because you didn’t know the protocol... You did something that he couldn’t factor in; you kept running. You know why you did that... you’re not from this world Olivia.” – Peter [Olivia's subconscious]

Right from the off this was an excellent episode. Watching who was clearly this episode's antagonist manipulate probabilities towards securing a fatal outcome was immersing, and by the end of the opening you could just tell this would be one of those way above par Fringe episodes.

Walternate here reveals at least the first part of his plan for deluding our Olivia with regards to her identity – because she holds one capability that Alt-Olivia did not; the ability to cross between universes easily. If this is the only reason for undertaking such extensive effort to get her to believe that falsehood, I found it a little underwhelming. Also, surely making her reach ‘the plateau’ and fully become Alt-Olivia would mean she lost everything Olivia-like about herself, including the ability to cross over? And if she retained it somehow, then during the tests that they are about to put her through, using Peter’s clothes as a stimulant, surely such items would also remind her of her true identity, meaning as the experiment succeeds she’d essential turn against them anyway?

It is also revealed here that Alt-Olivia had a partner (in the relationship sense), with whom our Olivia is now with. The key question here is does her partner know that it isn’t his Olivia (i.e. has he been told)? If he hasn’t been told then surely someone as close as a partner would be able to tell the difference? And if he has – his insistence for her to tell Broyles could be sign that he has been told, or could simply be the caring worries of a partner – why is he so ok with the change? By threat from Walternate?

Probability manipulation/prediction as a topic here was an excellent choice. Everything this show boils down to is the fact that how a single decision, however minor, made in different ways can and will branch off into separate universes. Showing us Milo's perspective as he observes all the possible outcomes of a given situation - them using a segmented screen to show us all the variable outcomes at once - reinforces and highlights for us the idea mentioned above; that an infinite number of universes exist for each outcome of every possible decision we make (the 'many worlds theory').

This makes me wonder if this show will ever venture into focusing on more than two universes at a time. Charlie Jade managed three at once successfully (even if this confused some people, making them calling it 'complex' and probably thus was a minor contributing factor towards the show's cancellation), so I think at least one more could be added to the mix without things getting out of hand. After all, isn't the plot hole here that really there should be a bunch of other Walters who also stole a Peter from other universes, and subsequently a bunch of other Walternates bent on destruction? With all of those trying to cross over into other universes, why has only this one managed to access ours? Shouldn't there be a storm of them knocking at our Walter's door, thinking him the perpetrator of their theft?

Neatly slipped in is another reminder of just how different this universe is to our own, with Olivia’s mention (presumably through the implanted memories) of “how much did you pay for those?”, referring to some avocados; implying that avocados are considerably rare and thus expensive in this universe.



Overall, I think this is the best episode of the three we’ve had so far for this season. The Alt-universe (and thus odd numbered) episodes are proving more interesting so far.

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Supernatural - 'Two and a Half Men' (Season 6, Episode 2): The Alpha's offspring

“What the hell are we gonna do with it? We can’t just drop it off at an orphanage, they might get upset when it turns Asian” - Dean

I thought, from reading the synopsis, that this episode would be terrible and a drop in standards after last week; that it would opt for the cheesy comedy of the brothers being lumbered with a child all too much. But what we were given wasn’t bad at all.

We were given the return of one of the show’s best monsters – the shape-shifter – and this time more knowledge of its origin and its goals. It worries me that this season might opt for a succession of ‘alpa’ monsters (the first versions of each kind), but when they are this cool and unstoppable, I don’t mind too much if they do.

I still think that what Dean wants deep inside, despite his claiming the opposite, is to be a hunter rather than be a family man. Here, Lisa spots it – saying “You don’t wanna be here Dean” – and offers him a neat little get out clause that enables him to return to the hunting life, without the guilt of abandoning his family.

One of the cousins, Mark Campbell – the one who barely talks – is killed off so early on here that I do worry about the point of having all these cousins here at all if they are just going to be killed off rapidly. Christian is growing ever more interesting to me, with his immediate disliking of Dean and up front animosity towards him.

Who did Samuel promise the deliverance of the alpha shape-shifter to? Bobby, or perhaps the person or thing that “brought Sam up and Samuel down.”

The comedy with the brothers trying to look after the child wasn’t stretched out too long and was dealt with quite well I thought. Season 6 is gladly still turning out rather well.



And with regards to the main picture I have used for this post, I was puzzled as to who the guy on the right was for a while, but I believe it is a behind the scenes shot of alpha shape-shifter Dean holding up a stunt man against the wall (who is meant to be Dean) in the scene where the alpha shape-shifter takes the baby back, no?

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The Mentalist - 'Cackle-Bladder Blood' (Season 3, Episode 2): Carnies and con men

“My sister was the only good, clean and honest thing I had in my life, and you ran off with her... You got her killed. You just had to be a big shot, had to get on the TV and run your mouth. It’s your fault she’s dead” – Danny Ruskin (Jane’s brother-in-law)

“Yes, it is. I know that – it is my fault. And I just hope that one day you’ll forgive me, and maybe one day I’ll forgive myself... I’m sorry” - Jane

I am positively thrilled at how this season is unfolding so far. After a sharply witty opening that dealt with Jane’s attempts to distance himself from those he loves for their own safety, I thought we might be lumbered with a redundant, run of the mill, episodes that avoided the main story arc. What we were dealt instead was a non-Red John episode that was still crucial to the forward momentum of the show.

We are given a glimpse into Jane’s marriage – something relatively untouched until now – through meeting Jane’s con man brother-in-law, Danny Ruskin, who blames Jane for the murder of his sister, yet is still capable of maintaining a good relationship with Jane, which is used to brilliant effect here with their con men-duo act, to resolve the case at hand. The loss they have shared together affords us a closer look at Jane’s self-blame over the murder of his family, and also gives us Jane’s first visit to their graves – him claiming he has never returned there since the funeral “because they are not here” (meaning it is just their bodies that lie there, not his family themselves). And we are also given a sturdier insight into Jane’s past as a 'carnie' and the strong ties that he still holds with those people.

Whilst tackling all of this sombre content, the excellent level of humour from last week is still maintained; the highlight here being a scene where Jane pretends to die after being ‘shot’ by his brother-in-law, which is played intentionally very chessily by Jane (so much so that it’s hard to see how the killer falls for it), which makes it all the more hilarious; as he gets up, Jane states: “Connie, Connie, Connie, you fell for the oldest gag in the book, and one of the cheapest – $3.55 at a novelty store near you. Beats the hell out of the cackle bladder.”




Another funny moment is Jane’s old woman con-woman friend Nicki, after trying to con Van Pelt, stating: “This sweet piece of fruit is a cop?” and Jane’s subsequent threat that if she doesn’t provide them with the information that they are seeking, that “this nice piece of fruit will take you downtown and treat you to a cavity search.” And also Jane’s repeating of ”thank you Lisbon,” louder and slower than before, when she says “I didn’t hear that” to imply that she would look the other way on a matter.

It was wonderful to see M. C. Gainey, of Lost fame, here playing an old ‘carnie’ friend of Jane’s excellently.

This episode is brimming with taught emotion, brilliant humour and relevance to this show’s main story arc; all exactly what we need this season.

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Fringe - ‘The Box’ (Season 3, Episode 2): Ruthless actions

"You don't have to remind me whose side I'm on" - Alt-Olivia

Two episodes in and the game we seem to be playing is a slow and exploratory one. There is minimal forward momentum with the story arc; we even here have an episode that feels like a return to the stand-alone, case-of-the-week episode format – the only difference being that the object in question here plays a part in Walternate’s larger endgame. Last week we got to explore the alternate universe’s characters via Olivia’s struggle there, and this week we get to explore how Alt-Olivia is fitting in and accomplishing her mission in our universe.

I believe I read in SciFiNow magazine that for the first stretch of this season all of the even numbered episodes will be set in our universe and all of the odd numbered episodes on the other side, which the season has indeed so far followed. I think this is a cool touch – not only for the significance of the ‘odd’ number in relation to the universe that is 'strange' to us, but also because we are being given both a healthy dose of this new toy – the other side – without losing touch with our own.

Perhaps inspired by Matheson’s short story and Richard Kelley’s recent adaptation of such, the curiosity of what lays inside a mysterious box getting the better of you premise is only really used, I think, to parallel the decision that Walter must make about whether to further ‘cross the line’, as Bell suggests, and whether to look inside the safety deposit box.



For me, the key thing to take away from this episode is that Alt-Olivia far more unlike our Olivia and indeed far more ruthless than we perhaps thought; shown by her action of shooting the deaf man in cold blood, as well as her distracting Peter with her sexual allures. Before this execution of an innocent man, she seemed like she could hold the potential to warm to our side and universe, even if perhaps not straight away, and possibly even change sides. Early on here though, she tells Newton (though it is more directed at us, the viewer): “You don’t have to remind me whose side I’m on” – a statement that we should really have accepted at face value. Her encounter with the third man puts to rest any hopes we might have had – she is loyal, she is ruthless and she is deadly. Whereas we can see from where Walternate’s maliciousness and disregard for human life stems – the theft of his son – it is far more shocking to see Olivia act in this manner. Could small, differently made choices made in her life really have turned her into this?

Alt-Olivia also doesn't seem to be playing her undercover role very well - several times in this episode she acts differently to how our Olivia acts, on purpose; with the dance, the music admiration, and even the way she now wears a fringe like with her original hairstyle, leading me to believe that Peter will definitely figure out her true identity, if he hasn't already. She is making it far too easy for him, and I really can't see how such a highly trained professional could be so foolish and careless. Either meaning that maintaining her cover is perhaps less important to these people than we thought, or that this is perhaps a minor plot error at play?

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